Quotes by Vidal, Gore




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"Apparently, a democracy is a place where numerous elections are held at great cost without issues and with interchangeable candidates."

Vidal, Gore on democracy    Share


"Democracy is supposed to give you the feeling of choice, like Painkiller X and Painkiller Y. But they're both just aspirin."

Vidal, Gore on democracy    Share

"Whenever a friend succeeds, a little something in me dies."

Vidal, Gore on envy
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"It is the spirit of the age to believe that any fact, no matter how suspect, is superior to any imaginative exercise, no matter how true."

Vidal, Gore on facts    Share

"I find in most novels no imagination at all. They seem to think the highest form of the novel is to write about marriage, because that's the most important thing there is for middle-class people."

Vidal, Gore on fiction    Share

"Writing fiction has become a priestly business in countries that have lost their faith."

Vidal, Gore on fiction    Share

"On 16 September 1985, when the Commerce Department announced that the United States had become a debtor nation, the American Empire died."

Vidal, Gore on america
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"As societies grow decadent, the language grows decadent, too. Words are used to disguise, not to illuminate, action: you liberate a city by destroying it. Words are to confuse, so that at election time people will solemnly vote against their own interests"

Vidal, Gore on language
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"The corporate grip on opinion in the United States is one of the wonders of the Western World. No First World country has ever managed to eliminate so entirely from its media all objectivity -- much less dissent."

Vidal, Gore on media
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"There is hardly an American male of my generation who has not at one time or another tried to master the victory cry of the great ape as it issued from the androgynous chest of Johnny Weissmuller, to the accompaniment of thousands of arms and legs snapping during attempts to swing from tree to tree in the backyards of the Republic."

Vidal, Gore on men    Share

"Never miss a chance to have sex or appear on television."

Vidal, Gore on opportunity
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"Some writers take to drink, others take to audiences."

Vidal, Gore on audiences
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"Think of the earth as a living organism that is being attacked by billions of bacteria whose numbers double every forty years. Either the host dies, or the virus dies, or both die."

Vidal, Gore on population    Share

"It is difficult to find a reputable American historian who will acknowledge the crude fact that a Franklin Roosevelt, say, wanted to be President merely to wield power, to be famed and to be feared. To learn this simple fact one must wade through a sea of"

Vidal, Gore on power    Share

"In America, the race goes to the loud, the solemn, the hustler. If you think you're a great writer, you must say that you are."

Vidal, Gore on publicity    Share

"I'm all for bringing back the birch, but only between consenting adults."

Vidal, Gore on punishment    Share

"Laughing at someone else is an excellent way of learning how to laugh at oneself; and questioning what seem to be the absurd beliefs of another group is a good way of recognizing the potential absurdity of many of one's own cherished beliefs."

Vidal, Gore on sarcasm
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"Sex is. There is nothing more to be done about it. Sex builds no roads, writes no novels and sex certainly gives no meaning to anything in life but itself."

Vidal, Gore on sex
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"I never miss a chance to have sex or appear on television."

Vidal, Gore on sex
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"There is no such thing as a homosexual or a heterosexual person. There are only homo -- or heterosexual acts. Most people are a mixture of impulses if not practices."

Vidal, Gore on sex    Share

"Style is knowing who you are, what to say, and not giving a damn."

Vidal, Gore on style
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"To a man, ornithologists are tall, slender, and bearded so that they can stand motionless for hours, imitating kindly trees, as they watch for birds."

Vidal, Gore on birds    Share

"There is something about a bureaucrat that does not like a poem."

Vidal, Gore on bureaucracy    Share

"If most men and women were forced to rely upon physical charm to attract lovers, their sexual lives would be not only meager but in a youth-worshiping country like America painfully brief."

Vidal, Gore on charm    Share

"A talent for drama is not a talent for writing, but is an ability to articulate human relationships."

Vidal, Gore on theater    Share

"The theater needs continual reminders that there is nothing more debasing than the work of those who do well what is not worth doing at all."

Vidal, Gore on theater    Share

"All in all, I would not have missed this century for the world."

Vidal, Gore on twentieth century    Share

"A narcissist is someone better looking than you are."

Vidal, Gore on vanity
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"It makes no difference whom you vote for -- the two parties are really one party representing four percent of the people."

Vidal, Gore on voting    Share

"Half of the American people never read a newspaper. Half never voted for President. One hopes it is the same half."

Vidal, Gore on voting
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"Many writers who choose to be active in the world lose not virtue but time, and that stillness without which literature cannot be made."

Vidal, Gore on writers and writing    Share

"Each writer is born with a repertory company in his head. Shakespeare has perhaps 20 players, and Tennessee Williams has about 5, and Samuel Beckett one -- and maybe a clone of that one. I have 10 or so, and that's a lot. As you get older, you become more skillful at casting them."

Vidal, Gore on writers and writing
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"Never have children, only grand children."

Vidal, Gore on children    Share

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